I hated that album when it first came out. It was such a departure from the faster hardcore and punk from the early albums. How woefully wrong I was. I found myself just sitting down one day and really listening to it. The most obvious change is the quantum leap away from albums that sound like they're recorded in a frat house basement. The studio polish gives the album a twinge of the subversive. It's one thing to record a punk album, it's another thing to record one full of backwards masking and studio tricks. The often derided "Beige Sunshine" becomes a statement of how punk loses it's bite when heavily engineered. This becomes obvious as critics focus on the children singing failing to notice it's nothing The Clash didn't do during their reign with "Career Opportunities". Throw in some samples of Kate Pearsen from The B-52's on the next track "Do The Brown Nose". This song comes in so hot on the heels of the mainstream hit from Iggy Pop "Candy" that you have a formula so profound even the musicians themselves would have to admit is too subtle for even them to notice.

But the real meat to the album is the second recording on track 12. A bonus musical monologue about the appalling self segregation going on in America's increasingly stratified college campuses. Years before students began to re-demand segregated (black only) dorms, the Milkmen warned us about the dangers of student activity fees going to fund any fucked up idea someone decides to form a club around. But especially minority exclusionary clubs that the college considers as evidence of a successful "diversity" program. Which brings us back to Paul Nelson. His commercial ends with a statement that implies his opponent pays teenagers to have sex with prostitutes but not with soldiers. Personally, as a taxpayer, I'm upset that the raw data from the gay Eskimo study hasn't been shown on C-span. I'm tired of having to get all of my homoeskimo erotica from the Internet.

2 Comments:

What the hell was that? The fukin' loons in the background. That has to be made up because it's too absurd to be true.

Then again, the bigger the lie, the easier it is to get away with.

Also, How could you not like Metaphysical Graffiti? I Tripped Over the Ottoman, Ringo Buys a Rifle, Dollar Signs In Her Eyes, If You Love Somebody Why Not Set Them on Fire, In Paise of Sha-na-na. Probably my all time favorite DM album, followed closely by Not Richard But Dick.